Hey there, how the hell you doing? I'm pretty good, thanks.
I took a minute to look back at a few of the last posts on this blog and it's not that I'm thinking "what the hell was that(?)" as much as damn, "who the hell was that(?)". But then I remember that it was and is, in fact, me. And that's cool. I mean I'm pretty sure I'm the only one with the password and I've no reason to try to convince anyone, including myself, that it wasn't all that long ago I wasn't happy. At all. That said, I'm a lot happier these days....which is also cool.
I'm back in Mexico and the weather has been almost annoyingly perfect. I've been writing and recording here in my little makeshift studio and it's been great. It's supposed to rain a bit today and if I'm being honest I'm excited to have a little change of pace. I'm kinda like my take on the weather in that if I don't have some shit days I come to take the good ones for granted. You can't have the highs without the lows and you can't have a rainbow without a little rain. That's a an excerpt from a song I wrote with some friends one time in the diner at the Holiday Music Motel while drinking bourbon at about 2 or 3AM. Or maybe it was PM and at that point I didn't much care because it was all the same. At that point I was emotionally flatlined and spending every bit of currency, emotional and monetary, I had on keeping it that way. Looking back, however, I realize that it wasn't only currency I was spending and that I was, in fact, leveraged to the hilt with everyone and every relationship I was blessed to have though I absolutely didn't see it that way. And if I'm being honest, again, I also didn't realize I was still taking advantage of that line of credit long after I officially sobered up. Even though I was waking up without a whiskey hangover I was still getting hammered on self pity every single day for quite a while. For years really. Apparently I had to work out some shit I'd been avoiding for a really, really long time. And I'm still working it out and I'll likely be working it out for the rest of my life and that, is also cool. Because everybody is working shit out, or has shit to work out and it's just that we all come to the realization that we have shit to work out at different points in our lives. Because we're all beautiful little fucking snowflakes and you guessed it...that's cool. I'm pretty sure I stole the beautiful little fucking snowflakes part from Gary John Bishop but I digress....
Back in the day I would ask my wife to proofread pretty much all of the blog posts I'd put up for public consumption. I'd say something like I wanted to make sure the spelling and punctuation was good or that I wanted to make sure I'd gotten all the pertinent details in or my favorites, that I wasn't being too long winded or wasn't swearing too much. That was all bullshit and what I was really looking for was a slice of validation, no matter how big or small, because I couldn't bare to actually be honest or put myself out there to people, or myself, without first having somebody tell me it was ok. But this is gonna be just me from now on. It's not that I don't value the shit out of her opinion, because I totally do, but you know what...she's busy. She's a successful and fabulously driven women who's got her own shit going on and I'm a big kid who can cross my own I's and dot my own T's.
You might imagine I've been reading a bunch of self-help, doing 12-step stuff, doing 12-step adjacent but not really 12-step stuff, seeing a therapist, hanging out with a support group, listening to podcasts, meditating, journaling, doing psychedelics and all the other things some people might have to do to get their feet on a solid path but hey, that's cool, because I have. I've been standing up and I've been falling down. Over and over, all over the place. Strikes and gutters, they're all part of the game. Today, I got back up and that's totally fucking cool.
Oh, music news! I've got some new songs coming pretty soon and, crossing my fingers here, they're gonna be on a slice of vinyl. There'll also be shows going up soon at www.joshharty.com and I've also got some other news concerning a little workshop I'm putting together but that'll be in the next episode.
Until then, be cool.
Josh
p.s. Next time, maybe a few less swears... maybe.
